


I'll Remember You

by AestheticFailure



Category: Unus Annus - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Memory Alteration, Unus Annus, can be read as platonic, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28174989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AestheticFailure/pseuds/AestheticFailure
Summary: When he spoke, it was in the same voice that was in the memories. He was beautiful, and it made the breath catch in both of their lungs. “You remembered me.”
Relationships: Unus/Annus
Comments: 5
Kudos: 61





	I'll Remember You

In the beginning, there was nothing. Well, nothing wasn’t quite the right word. There was something, but it hadn’t made itself known just yet. For the man at the center of it all, there were memories. Bits and pieces of a life that he had lived, simple things. The fading scent of pancakes, the taste of watermelon. But nothing ever stayed, never lingered for longer than a second before he was alone with his thoughts again. And alone, he was.

The man knew everything. He knew that he’d had a life, he’d been someone before he became… nothing. Stuck in time, in a blank canvas that he could never quite figure out how to paint. It had become painfully obvious in the first few moments of his “life” that he was missing something. He was missing someone.

He had tried calling out a thousand times, a name he had forgotten stuck in the back of his throat. How was he supposed to know who to look for when he didn’t even know his own name? He could remember the feeling of a hand pressed into his, fingers curling around his, but it was gone in an instant. Just a taste of a memory, enough to taint his mood and make him angry beyond belief. Who had put him here, in this empty void by himself? It was cruel.

Time was weird in his personal hell. He didn’t know how long it had been, there was no way to tell as the days passed him by. It was infuriating, the silence was maddening, and he began to wonder if he had ever been truly sane. But as the time passed, he began to let his anger motivate him to do something.

There was nothing in the blackness, nothing to see, nothing to touch, nothing to occupy his time and his thoughts. The dark was beginning to get on his nerves. Looking up for the thousandth time, he had a vague memory, one that barely danced in the farthest corner of his mind. He was laying on his back, staring at the stars, and he felt the closest thing to love that he had felt since arriving there. Staring up at a darkness similar to the one he knew so well, watching the stars in the sky- and then it was gone.

Gone from his memory as quickly as it had arrived. Out of his grip, and out of his control. He felt the fury build up inside himself, his fists clenching at his sides. He screamed at the emptiness, cursing it for damning him to be alone for so long, begging for it to just end already. There was nothing for him there, there was nothing for him to do, nothing to take away the part of him that he knew he was missing.

The memory gone, he could still imagine the way the stars looked. Maybe not on that particular night, but in general. The man put his hand up, desperate to see something other than the suffocating nothing around him. Closing his eyes, he did something he hadn’t done since he woke up. He tried to have hope.

Like a switch flipping on, when he opened his eyes, there was a single star resting high above him. It was weak, and trying to flicker out, but it was there. He had done that. An overwhelming sense of pride ran through him, and he smiled. He didn’t know the last time that he had done that. He went to work, putting star after star into the sky, unsure of exactly how he was doing it, but not complaining either way. 

It felt like forever, but once he finally stepped back and admired his work, he knew that it was beautiful. The black all around him was gone, replaced with deep shades of blue and purple, the stars illuminating the space above him. It was beautiful, and it was all his creation. He found himself grinning more and more often, and it was a welcome change. If only he had someone else to see what he had done, to show them what it was that he had created.

His happy emotions didn’t last long, however. There was a brief lull in time, and then the space around him began to change. It happened in a cycle, a never changing pattern that took his night away. The first time that it had happened, he thought he was finally dying. And he would have welcomed it. He would have gone willingly, but he knew that no amount of begging the void would get him out of there.

The change made him sick. He had spent so long making his stars perfect, getting the colors just right, only to have it ripped away from him. Was this the universe’s way of punishing him? The deep colors slowly began to change from his carefully crafted ones, to a light blue, yellows and reds mixing in throughout the cycle. It made him feel nauseous, to see. But in the same breath, he knew that it was beautiful. He felt pride for what the other had done.

The man was confused. If he had made the night, who had made the day? Was it another being, one that he hadn’t met in the darkness that he had been trapped in? Or was it a sick joke by the void itself, taking away the very thing that he had worked tirelessly on perfecting? If it was another being, then why had they never shown their face? They were trying to undermine everything that he was proud of, and it hurt more than he was willing to admit.

He couldn’t sit there in the endless day and night cycle forever. It was beautiful, yes, but it was also exhausting. He spent years searching for whatever it was that had brought light to his world, but it was futile. With the light, he could look at himself and realize that he was naked, so he fixed it.

He put on the only thing that felt right to him, a pure white suit. It felt fitting, since he had lived in the darkness for so long, that he brighten himself up. Once he had fixed that small problem, he grew bored. So he decided to start a new project.

The ground beneath him wasn’t exactly solid, but it was enough for him to not fall. It took concentration, but each step soon began to echo through the void as the ground solidified beneath him. It wasn’t any one texture, everything a different material in a jumble of dirt and rock beneath him. But it made everything seem more certain. He wasn’t going to fall through the void, and with a shock, he realized that he didn’t want to any more.

There was a flash in his mind, a series of small memories coming to him in an overwhelming wave. Chipped black nail polish disappearing beneath a sleeve, holding something in slender fingers. A story about cigars that he couldn’t quite remember, a pale arm with black ink tracing through it in an intricate design. And then, it was gone. Just like all the others had been. This time though, he didn't feel the overwhelming crash of losing what few memories he’d been given. He felt a surge of warmth through him, and he knew without a doubt that the time spent with this person had been worth this pain.

There was something in that small tattoo. He knew it. It was so close, so close to being able to reach out and grab, but it wasn’t something that he could do on his own. He had stopped in his tracks when the flood of thoughts started, and he hadn’t moved. He started to take a step, looking down when his foot brushed against something. A single rose was growing out of the soil he had made.

It took time. Time to get used to the other being that he knew was out there. They worked every day, creating something new. Sometimes they worked together, creating waterfalls and forests to walk through. And sometimes they worked against each other, changing designs and details that had taken days to perfect. And it made him angry each and every time. But there was no stopping what was happening, and he knew that. The other would do as they pleased, just as he would.

The only thing it seemed he couldn’t create was another living being. If you could even consider him living. He didn’t eat, or sleep, or do any of the things that living beings did. He didn’t even know if he was breathing, or if it was a reflex.

He had been working tirelessly, making sure that each blade of grass stayed bright and healthy, when he was hit with a memory so strong that it nearly brought him to his knees. He had been getting more and more of them since he’d began creating his world, and he knew that it wasn’t a coincidence. But this was more than he’d ever been given. A few words that meant everything to him.

“I wouldn’t be the person I am, without you.” It was genuine, and confident, and not his own words. The person he'd been missing, the person who had left such a burn in his chest had been the one to say them. It should have made him sad, but it didn’t. A soft smile came across his lips, and even though the memory was already fading back into the nothing, it was enough to give him the motivation to get up from his current project, and get ready for the next one.

The memories came daily. It kept him motivated, keeping him going when he got frustrated and wanted to quit. But he had the potential to do amazing things here, and he knew it. He didn’t want to waste that potential. Sometimes the memories were simple things, the feeling of a hand on the back of his or a scent. Sometimes they were songs, car rides he didn’t care about on a trip with someone he did. It was always him. The man he was doing all of this for, the reason he had been working so long on the same thing.

By the time that he had finished, he was certain that years had passed. It had taken time, and the outside world had changed around him, the other keeping busy as well. But each and every block that had laid down was important. Each one held a memory.

His suit had stayed pristine, pure white and perfect. He didn’t know what he was expecting to gain from working so long on this, but he knew that it was important. He looked up, the sun the other had made bright in the sky, a sort of heat beaming down on him. It was pleasant. The only thing to do was to look at what he had made.

He had made it in a clearing between two forests, the sounds of a creek nearby faint and pleasant. He’d worked tirelessly, through both day and night, to create something he was almost more proud of than the night sky. It was a house, a home for himself. It had taken him far too long to think of making a house, and he wanted to make it perfect.

Dark, almost stained black wood towered above him in a grand staircase that spiraled up at a colliding wall of black and white. It hadn’t looked very nice at first, but the contrast of black and white was something that he had felt passionately about when he was building it. He took the steps up to the front door, knowing that the memories would come with each step. And they did.

A race to the top of a staircase, jumping over logs and ropes. He’d been out of breath, but the other had won. He knew that much. Stepping in through the front door he had made, the smell of pancakes cooking greeted him. There was no one there, but the image of a fuzzy person standing in the living room, their arms out, appeared before dissipating. That was the thing about memories. He couldn’t see their face. Not that he could recall if he did anyway.

He made his way into the kitchen, more carefully crafted than the rest of the house. He had spent a lot of time getting it exactly the way he wanted it, there were a lot of memories stored in the large kitchen. He smiled as a tune came to his mind.” The dance of Italy, huh?” He didn't know if it had been him or the other that had said the words, but they brought warm feelings to his chest as they came back to him. Sure, some of the memories were unpleasant, but more often than not, they were enough to bring a smile to his face.

He walked through the kitchen into a sitting room, the smell of something putrid and strong filling his senses. He could almost taste it, the foul odor, and yet, he couldn’t help but laugh. He didn’t know what that one was, but it was certainly one that had happened more than once. A spa gone wrong, perhaps? A sauna?

Up the stairs, they kept coming. Racing on his hands and knees up and down a separate set of steps. Bruising his elbows as they both laughed.

Through the bedroom door. Laying together on the bed, the sound of a laugh that didn’t belong to him echoing through his ears. He didn’t realize that there was something else in the room until he felt the floorboards creak underneath his feet.

He spun around, terrified. He hadn’t been afraid since the beginning. But this was different. His gaze glanced over a man, dressed in a suit identical to his own, besides the fact that it was black in color. They contrasted perfectly, and it was beautiful.

The second he caught sight of the other man, it all came back in a rush. Camping together, because it was always safer to be with a buddy. Drunken stories told at midnight of accents. Hugs that he hadn’t accepted at the time, but he would give anything to have now. This was his person. He was in front if him.

The other man had tears in his eyes, not trying to stop them from falling as he smiled. When he spoke, it was in the same voice that was in the memories. He was beautiful, and it made the breath catch in both of their lungs. “You remembered me.”

The white clad man nodded, images of dogs, dancing, and laughing flying through his mind. But this time, they didn’t leave. They had built this world together, it was theirs to make special and their own. And suddenly, he remembered his love’s name.

Neither started it, but they were hugging, arms circled tightly around each other as they just enjoyed being together for the first time in a lifetime. It was priceless, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world. He didn’t pull back, didn’t have to, he knew who he was talking to.

“Unus?”

“Annus.”


End file.
